Korea has four seasons--spring, summer, autumn and winter.
There exist certain differences between the astronomical and meteorological division on four seasons and the folk customary division but the people have observed spring from January to March, summer from April to June, autumn form July to September and winter from October to December in the lunar calendar in general.
From olden times, the Korean people have regarded the spring as the season for sowing, summer as the season of growth when all things grow thickly, autumn as the season of harvest reaping all kinds of cereals and fruits and winter as the season of the storing all farm products, in association with the agricultural production activities.
The Korean people have enjoyed the life while encouraging the folk custom peculiar to the seasons since long ago.
The noble and beautiful mental traits and emotion are reflected in the fine national custom handed down traditionally among the Korean people.
Typical folk festivals in spring are the New Year’s Day, Jongwol-taeborum and Chongmyong that have their own peculiar folk custom.
The New Year’s Day is the most auspicious day in a year. On the day, people hold a memorial service cherishing the memory of late forefathers and give a New Year’s greetings in festive dressing to the elders in family and village.
It is now the tradition of the Korean people to offer New Year greeting first to the portraits bearing the beaming images of the great leaders and their statues erected in different regions and then give New Year’s greetings to the elders in the village, as the New Year’s greeting is the traditional New Year’s custom of the Korean people who observe courtesy and morality well.
Rice-cake soup is the best among the New Year’s food such as rice-cake, pancake, fruit punch, sweet rice drink, roasted meat and so on.
Typical folk games on the New Year’s Day are yut game, seesawing, kite-flying, sleighing, windmilling and so on among which the most popular is yut game that can be played by men and women, the old and the young.
Jongwol-taeborum is a folk festival celebrated on a large scale as good as the New Year’s Day among the folk festivals in January.
The Korean people held different colorful ceremonial functions on this day wishing good luck in the year. Typical are setting-up of poles hanging the ears of different grains, putting stones between the branches of fruit tree and playing with torch and so on. In the evening all people in the village climb up to mountains to welcome the first full moon. It was believed that the first person to see the rising full moon would enjoy good luck that year, and people would predict rich or poor harvest of the year from the look of the full moon. Even today the Korean people like to see the first full moon rising on this day.
Special dishes of Jongwol-taeborum included 9 side dishes made of dried herbs including leaves of radish and cabbage and etc. along with boiled five grains, laver-wrapped rice, sweet-flavored glutinous rice mixed with dates, chestnuts, pine-nuts and sesame oil, noodle, ear-quickening wine and so on.
As Chongmyong means the day of beginning of clear and bright spring weather, people pay courtesy to their late forefathers, repairing and turfing their tombs.
In summer, there was a custom enjoying the day while having bath on the bank of a river or stream on the 15th of lunar June and making different foods conducive to prevent the heat in the hottest period of summer.
On this day, people in Pyongyang enjoyed the time pleasantly on the bank of Taedong River and Photong River while eating rice-gruel mixed with fishes including carp, gray mullet and goldfish and fruits ripened in June including peach, melon and water melon and other foods and drinks.
Tangogi soup, seasoned soup of chopped chicken, boiled barley, onion soup, rice and red-bean porridge and etc. are the foods for the hottest period of summer. tangogi soup is typical in this period.
It has been a custom from old times to eat tangogi soup in this hot period as it was believed that it is tonic and enables the people to prevent diseases and stand the heat, as the people break into a great sweat in the hottest period of summer.
Celebration of chusok is a typical folk custom in autumn.
Chusok is the day on which the people harvest the new crops of the year prior to the full-scale harvesting to show sincerity to the late ancestors.
The Korean people have regarded it as their due obligation and custom to prepare the foods with new crops of the year before harvesting to look round the ancestors’ tombs.
Typical foods and drinks on this day are liquor, different kinds of rice cakes, soup, sweets and cakes made of new crops.
After visiting the tombs, the people enjoy the day pleasantly while playing folk games including ssirum, swinging and a tug of war.
Custom of making kimchi and eating rice and red-bean porridge on winter solstice is typical to the Korean people in winter.
The Korean people harvest radish and cabbages to make kimchi for winter with the beginning of winter.
They call lunar November the month of winter solstice and a day when the night is longest and the daytime is shortest the day of winter solstice, and it is their tradition to eat rice and red-bean porridge on the day.
The Korean people’s traditional folk custom are being inherited and developed well in keeping with the sense of beauty thanks to the correct policy of the Workers’ Party of Korea to cherish and maintain national identity.
